deKay's Lofi Gaming

Let’s Play! Gauntlet

Warrior is about to die! Elf needs food badly! Eat your food, don’t shoot it! Try this level now! So many quotable speech samples, none of which appear in the Spectrum version I have here. Tch, eh? My first memories of Gauntlet are when my cousin Richard came to stay with us, and him and I played Gauntlet for about zleventyfivesix hours non-stop. Both on the same Spectrum keyboard. With the Symbol Shift key sellotaped down because that activated the …

Gauntlet (GBA)

The other half of Gauntlet and Rampart, obviously. And, like Rampart, it’s an excellent conversion even on a very small screen. I did get stuck on Level 14 though – I had a pocket full of keys (© The Rock) but had to pick up another to progress. But I couldn’t. Thankfully, the old hang-around-for-a-few-minutes trick worked and the walls all turned to exits.

Gauntlet (360)

There’s a sale on at XBLA at the moment (although it’s only two days long), with Gauntlet reduced to just 200 points. Rude not to, eh? It’s a lot harder than I recall. So hard, in fact, that in single player I think Level 8 is impossible, with Questor at least. You can continue as many times as you like, but you’re returned to the start of the level rather than just carry on. I know this is probably how …

Alien Breed Special Edition ’92 (Evercade): COMPLETED!

I seem to remember this getting really good reviews upon original release, but I’m struggling to see how. I did look up some of them, and came across this incredible bit of art editor drunkenness from Amiga User International, which attempts to show the screen that comes up when you access a computer terminal, but fails, rather than any of the actual game itself. Incredible work. And also look out for some great whitespace issues: Anyway, that review also tells …

Hades (Switch): COMPLETED!

I thought I’d actually completed this about a month ago, except it seems that just reaching the end isn’t enough. You have to reach the end ten times. Anyway, I’ve done that now. Hades is a roguelite action game, where you, as Zagreus, Hades’ son, must escape from hell and find your mother on the surface. You die a lot along the way, which takes you back to the start, but slowly your skills improve both by getting permanent buffs …

Gate of Doom (Evercade): COMPLETED!

“I’m the wizard!” it shouts as you choose to be the wizard when you start the game. Stupid, but it stuck in our house. I wasn’t the wizard though, my daughter was. I was the knight. In this scrolling fighting game, not completely unlike Golden Axe or Gauntlet III, each character has different skills but as you die one hell of a lot regardless it doesn’t really matter that much. Yes, it’s a coin-muncher but as it’s on the Evercade …

104 Game Challenge

Just like last year, this year I took part in the RetroCollect 52 Game Challenge. The idea was to complete, uh, 52 games in a single year. Back in June, I successfully became the first person taking part to hit the 52 game barrier. But I wasn’t going to stop there. With the challenge over before the year was half done, I aimed for 104 games. The 104 Game Challenge, if you will. For the less mathematical of my readers, …